Gluten Love

well, daniel is adjusting just fine to his new gluteny-status. he announces to everyone at mealtime that "doctor said i can eat glu-ten!" we are all glad to have the gluten box come up from the basement (full of food that i couldn't bear to just throw away when we started this 4 months ago.) our pantry has about doubled. and so far, no ill effects....

Good News! So, why do I feel like crying?

well, we all went back to the specialist doctor today to get the results of the labs. daniel was negative for the genetic marker for celiac, and had no gluten antibodies (which could have been because he hasn't eaten gluten since september, but it was still a good thing) and so was i. chris had one of the two genetic markers, but since his antibodies were also negative, she wasn't concerned with that. so, apparently there is only a 1% chance that daniel could still have celiac in the absence of those markers. good news! she told us to go ahead and put him back on a regular diet, and to watch him for signs that he is having trouble, but chances are very good that whatever the problem was last summer, it is not celiac disease.

so, why am i not dancing in the streets? of course i was relieved that daniel will not have to live with such a restrictive diet his whole life, and that none of the rest of us will either. as long as he continues to do fine, the problem seems to have solved itself. but, i also didn't feel as happy as i expected to. i don't know if i had just been preparing myself for the news to be different for so long, or what, but i feel confused and let down, and worried that there may be something else entirely going on that we don't know what it is. not that he is sick right now, just that he could be if we go back to how things were--but this time, without the celiac diagnosis to pin it on. i know, tomorrow has enough worries of its own, without me worrying them all up front.

but also feeling like all this time, energy and effort that i have been putting in these last 4 months, not to mention the expense and extra planning, was all just a big waste. did i just colossally overreact? is it possible that the sickness went away when we took out gluten just because of a coincidence? that makes me feel kind of stupid or crazy, like "those moms" who are convinced that every little thing that happens to their kid is some big emergency.

this is apparently the hardest good news that i've ever had to hear.

tonight for dinner we are having homemade whole wheat bread, and cake. with lots of gluten.

Gluten-free resources

on sunday all of us went out to eat with chris' parents (colorado natives now), and we went to our favorite restaurant in louisville, The Huckleberry. think breakfast restaraunt meets high tea, if you can. it is always an interesting experience these days, since living glutenless, because usually most everything in a restaurant is either made with gluten or has touched something that is. however, there are always pleasant surprises, and this time our waitress had a relative with celiac, so i didn't have to go through any descriptive demands for how daniel's meal needed to be prepared. not that i am very good at that yet, but i am practicing. then, there's always the possibility that the tests will come back negative next week.

anywhoo, in the meantime, i am still in the process of gathering info (of course i am), and recently came across a post in a blog called [gluten free] goddess (see link on the left) where she writes out in a very comprehensive way all the different ways she substitutes for gluten when she cooks--seemed like a lot of good info, so i thought i'd share it here.

Crawling!

'nuf said.

Blood Test Number One

....and hopefully the last. today we (and by "we" i mean the whole family...) went to see a specialist about daniel's possible celiac disease, to ask questions and to begin the process of formal diagnosis. for the last 3.5 months that we have been feeding him a gluten-free diet, we have suspected that celiac could be the answer, but haven't pursued the testing necessary to make sure. as to why we waited so long, well, for that you will have to ask the insurance companies.

anyway, in many ways it was a relief to finally be on the road to knowing for sure what is going on and the details of what his treatment will be. we began this after getting some half-information from our family doctor and filling in the gaps with my own research (and realizing that in many ways we have done this backwards--and may pay for that later....our family doc recommended taking gluten out of his diet *before* we did any testing, and we now know that if someone has been on a gluten-free diet, the tests can come back falsely negative, so we may have to re-introduce gluten for a while to get an accurate result.)

however, for the record, spending the morning with all 3 boys in the doctors office, followed by a trip to the lab for a blood draw is a very exhausting propostition. if chris hadn't been there, i don't think we would have made it. they all did very well, considering, but having to be quiet and still for 3 hours is a lot to ask of 3 active boys. and daniel, bless his heart, was very brave for the blood draw, but taking 3 vials of blood from a 2.5 year old is just pretty traumatic no matter what you do.

so, we'll see. if the tests come back negative (daniel, chris and i all had them) for the genetic marker, then we are pretty sure that it isn't celiac. if it comes back positive, then we go back for more testing. we are praying for clarity.

Happy New Year

well, we here in the estoll household did Not stay up until midnight to ring in the new year...a fact that is terribly sad, but true. new year's eve in my young and carefree days used to be marked by a big party, sometimes even with masks. (ask betty, if you want to know.) this year, however, i am old and i spent the evening watching tlc with my parents (complete with commercials for retirement accounts and i've-fallen-and-i-can't-get-up buttons) and going to bed at 10:15. such is reality when the babe is guaranteed to wake you at least 3 times before dawn. maybe next year.

however, i did think i would try for some new years resolutions, since one can make those regardless of how much sleep one has had...and may even be more fun with less. i don't normally do formal resolutions, but as was mentioned above, i am old now, and so must face up to the music so to speak.

so, here are a few resolutions, in no particular order:

1. lose weight--the classic resolution. this one is actually a possibility for me, though, since i have already lost 45 lbs since jonathan was born. before you get too congratulatory, i gained 55lbs while pregnant, so you do the math. ideally, i would like to get back to where i was before i was constantly pregnant and nursing, which would be an additional 10.

2. strive to say "yes" to the boys more. i think that particularly with all the chaos of the last 6months, much of my time has been spent in some level of crisis mode, and my reflex for the boys has become more often "just a minute", or "we'll do that later" than "let's play." and really, how hard is it to just take 10 minutes to play before going on to the next thing. so now that we are not so wild-eyed and white-knuckled, i want to put them first whenever possible, and let the Next Thing wait for a little while.

3. settle in. because of the wildness of our days, as we moved in to our new home many things in our house were thrown in the closest corner or have been languishing in random boxes instead of thoughtfully organized into a new, logical place. so i'd like to work on regaining a sense of order in our house. should only take about 365 days or so (if i'm lucky).

so, what are your resolutions?

happy new year!